By the way – after his 21 May 2011 debacle, Harold Camping did not clamp up. Rather, he came up with another new date – ‘The Rapture’, he said, would now occur on 21 October 2011. The earlier date had – you’ve guessed it – been the result of a numerical error, he said.

DOMINOES FALL ALL OVER THE MIDDLE EAST by CAMERON DUODU The Ghanaian Times 22 February 2011 So now, it is Libya’s turn. After Tunisia and Egypt, it is Libya that is feeling the pinch of massive people’s anger. The Libyan situation is less clear to the outside world than either Tunisia’s or Egypt’s or even …

THE ‘WICKED LEAKS’ AND THE WICKED WAYS OF US DIPLOMACY By CAMERON DUODU The exchanges between high Ghana government officials — including President John Mills himself — and the US embassy on the drugs problem are very revealing. The cables lay bare the weaknesses of the Ghana drug enforcement system, and give us a touching …

Sarkozy’s new Africa policy may have been a disquieting change in course for Africans, yet not a surprise to them. Many Africans were wary of Sarkozy before he took office. As Interior Minister, a job he held twice under President Chirac, Sarkozy was well known for his no-nonsense law-and-order views. At Interior, Sarkozy made remarks that raised flags about his sensitivity toward France’s minorities, particularly those with origins in Africa, either the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa. In June 2005, after the killing of a young boy in a troubled Paris suburb with a high number of minorities, Sarkozy said he would clean the area out “with a Karcher,” referring to a German high-pressure, water-hose cleaner. At the time of the November 2005 riots in France, Sarkozy described the rioters as “voyous” (thugs) and “racaille” (scum, rabble), the latter term generating strong critical responses from France’s minorities and from others worried about their Interior Minister’s (and possible next President’s) views on ethnic issues.

Gagging the press is dangerous to a government’s own health By Cameron Duodu 2010-11-18, Issue 505 http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/68879 Printer friendly version cc DRB62‘The road to controlling the press, however attractive to rulers it may be, must be trodden with extreme wariness. For it is luxuriantly strewn with signposts that read: “Expect unintended consequences!”’, writes Cameron Duodu.The …

FT: Were you worried during that period [when the 2008 election result had not been declared]? Because some of your own supporters have suggested there was the very real threat of a coup during that period.
JK: The coup would have happened if I had ignored the electoral commission and declared an emergency… We had only about ten days… left to the constitutional deadline for transfer of power…[If I had stayed on under a state of emergency] the implication would have been that I had staged a coup!